If you were listening to NPR’s “On the Media” show over the weekend (podcast available here), you heard an amazing statistic: “96 percent of the television ad spending [in the Florida gubernatorial race] is coming from outside groups.” “That is extraordinary,” claimed the guest. Indeed it is – one might say, unbelievable.
So unbelievable, in fact, that I wanted to take a look at the numbers myself. After all, “outside group” spending is nowhere near that large a percentage of ad buys federally. As I have discussed before when critiquing other bad/misleading statistics, candidates and political parties, alone, account for roughly 75 percent of all campaign spending – the vast majority of which results in TV ad buys. How could Florida be so different? Was this really evidence (as NPR claimed) of “the corrosive influence of money in politics post Citizens United”?
Here is the story of the “96 percent.”
The claim was made on NPR by Chisun Lee, Counsel for the Brennan Center’s Democracy program. Ms. Lee was citing a statistic from a report she co-authored, titled “After Citizens United: The Story in the States.” Page 23 of that report restates the following statistic: “In Florida, for example, the race for governor has seen an enormous amount of outside spending, with 96 percent of television ad spending coming from outside groups.” Where did the Brennan Center get this information?
Footnote 196, which was attached to the aforementioned statistic, pointed me to this article from the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). That article had a slightly different version of the claim: “the campaign committees of incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic challenger and former Gov. Charlie Crist are responsible for less than 4 percent of that spending.” CPI flipped it around – referencing not “outside spending,” but candidate spending. But that distinction must be meaningless, right? After all, the CPI article was titled, ‘“Outside’ groups swamp Florida’s airwaves in race for governor.”
CPI derived the “four percent” figure from their own analysis of TV ads in Florida based on estimated data for how much those ads would cost. This analysis, however, tells a different story from what we heard on NPR. As of October 27th, approximately $81.1 million was spent on TV ads in the Florida gubernatorial race. Of that, it is true that the candidate committees spent a small percentage – just 2.2 percent (this figure is even less, as the original data came from the September analysis by CPI).
The vast majority of the ad buys, however, did not come from “outside groups,” at least not by any reasonable definition of that term. The two biggest spenders in the race were the “Republican Party of Florida” and the “Democratic Party of Florida.” Together, they accounted for $64.4 million, or just under 80 percent of political ads run in the race. “Outside groups,” as in PACs, Super PACs, etc. accounted for roughly 18 percent – not 96 percent.
What this means is listeners of NPR will come away believing, incorrectly, that this Florida gubernatorial election has been dominated by “outside groups,” when it has actually been dominated by the major political parties. Indeed, NPR host Bob Garfield said in response to the false statistic: “It’s as if they are not even trying to pretend that there’s any separation between campaigns and Super PACs and other outside donors.” Mr. Garfield appears to believe unquestioningly something that is not true – and his listeners will, as well.
This is the sad result of inventing a problem and then finding data to prove that the problem exists.
But if you get past the bluster about the threat of “outside” ads, there is an interesting question regarding Florida’s political spending. Why do political parties, not candidates, run so many ads in Florida? Let us delve deep into state campaign finance law. Warning! Stop now, if you want to avoid the weeds.
Despite the fact that the Brennan Center and NPR both tie the “statistic” to 2010’s Citizens United ruling, the answer far predates that decision. The reason actually has to do with an exemption in Florida law, regarding party giving to candidates. In Section 106.021(3)(d) of the Florida election statutes, you will find the following section, hidden away in a part of the law involving duties of the campaign treasurer.
Expenditures made directly by any affiliated party committee or political party regulated by chapter 103 for obtaining time, space, or services in or by any communications medium for the purpose of jointly endorsing three or more candidates, and any such expenditure may not be considered a contribution or expenditure to or on behalf of any such candidates for the purposes of this chapter.
In non-legalese, that Section means that parties can run ads on behalf of candidates (as long as they mention three or more candidates), and those ads do not count as contributions. (In Florida, contributions from political parties to candidates are otherwise capped at $250,000 per election for gubernatorial candidates). Watch closely in this ad run by the Republican Party of Florida – despite the fact that the entire ad is about the governor’s race, the disclaimer at the end says: “The Republican Party of Florida endorses and urges you to vote for Rick Scott for governor, Jeanette Nunez for State Representative District 119 and Clay Ingram for State Representative District 1.” See the ad was about “three or more” candidates!
The process has nothing to do with Citizens United, nothing to do with “outside groups,” and nothing to do with a new era of campaign corruption. So many ads in Florida are not run by the candidates themselves because, at some point, the Florida Legislature wrote an exemption that allows unlimited ads by the political parties, so long as they endorse “three or more” candidates.
This fact might actually be of interest to the listeners of NPR. It speaks to how politicians write campaign finance laws to benefit themselves, in this case allowing political parties to do the heavy lifting and spend beyond Florida’s admittedly low contribution limits (Florida ranks in the bottom five in terms of individual limits on contributions to candidates, adjusting for the size of its population and, therefore, the added expense of its many media markets.)
Unfortunately, this obsession with “outside money” causes pro-“reform” activists to miss a genuinely interesting story about campaign finance.
